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LSE IDEAS THINK-TANK PUBLISHES REPORT ON ARAB SPRING

The IDEAS think-tank of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has published an extensive and in-depth report on the aftermath of the Arab Spring, with a specific focus on the power shifts that followed as a consequence of the cataclysmic events in the region.

Dr Toby Dodge, also of the LSE, concludes this report by noting that ‘successful revolutions are very rare indeed’. Behind the headlines, this report’s conclusions are pessimistic. The authors here find little evidence to suggest that future historians will rank the events of 2011 with those of 1848, or 1989. Simply too few of the fundamentals of social, economic and political organisation in the Arab world have been successfully contested by the protests. As 2011’s Spring turns into 2012’s summer, the answer to the question of whether there has been a power shift in the Middle East, is a decisive ‘not yet’.